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Todd Rogers named mayor in council's annual reorganization

The Lakewood City Council completed its annual reorganization on March 26, selecting Todd Rogers to serve as Lakewood’s mayor from March 26, 2019 to March 24, 2020, and naming Jeff Wood as vice mayor for the same time period.

The tradition in Lakewood and many cities of its size is for mayoral duties to rotate annually among the five members of the city council. The mayor has the same vote as any other council member in meetings, but chairs the meetings and serves as the city’s main spokesperson at public events.

This will be the fourth term as mayor for Todd Rogers, who was originally elected to the city council in 2001. He is serving his fifth term as a council member, after being re-elected in March 2017.

The council’s annual reorganization night started with a “Lakewood Celebrates” community gathering where expressions of thanks and appreciation were made to Steve Croft for his 2018-2019 mayoral term. Croft will continue to serve as a council member for the rest of his term, which runs through March 2022.

After being selected as the new mayor, Rogers presented remarks to about 150 people gathered in the City Council chambers.

Mayor Rogers talked about the fiscal challenges Lakewood is facing, as the city works to resolve a budget deficit caused by a state takeaway of local funds, increased fees from the state-run employee retirement system, and flattening sales tax revenues as more shoppers go online instead of to Lakewood merchants.

Rogers noted that cities across California are facing the same sort of budget difficulty, and that while the causes for the deficit may not lie with Lakewood, the responsibility for solving it in Lakewood falls on the City Council.

“This is not the first time that Lakewood has faced financially challenging times,” said Rogers. “And just like City Councils and city residents before us made tough decisions and met those challenges, so will we. I’m confident of it.”

On a celebratory note, Rogers mentioned that the city’s 65th anniversary would be recognized in the weeks ahead.

“I look forward,” said Rogers, “to working with my City Council colleagues, our city staff and all our residents in the year ahead to meet the challenges we face and to keep Lakewood the great community that got started 65 years ago and that has many many great years ahead of it."